I want to take a few minutes now to share with you the important role, the critical role, Kornelia, my muse, has played in my life. I say “critical” because I’m not sure I’d be alive, at all, to the many possibilities that make up our human experience at my age, if not for her. I could have easily become another “dead man walking”, only half-conscious, stumbling through my remaining years if it hadn’t been for Kornelia’s lively presence.
Six years ago I lost my wife to Alzheimer’s. We’d been married 61 years. I never thought I’d be a widower but there I was, suddenly, lost and alone at 86 years but with the good sense to set a working goal for myself. I was going to spend the rest of my life committed to “unconditional love” whatever that meant and wherever that took me.
A year or so later, Kornelia came along, helping me, over several years, to focus that “unconditional love” where it had never been focused before – on me. My whole life, my entire being, had been focused on “love of neighbor” – and I had derived great satisfaction from that – but in the process I had ignored the second part of that teaching. “Love your neighbor- as yourself”. Now it was time to direct that love inward. I didn’t see this right away but Kornelia did.
Through many conversations over coffee, and after numerous, sometimes tearful, agonizing, discussions, Kornelia was able to lead me, kicking and screaming, deep within where I needed to be. It was there, finally, that I was able to re-identify myself. It was in bringing unconditional love to myself that I now saw myself in a new light, a fully conscious, worthy, human being, capable of healing, loving and creating in my own right, all gifts of the evolutionary process.
I’m a new man now, younger as I get older. I don’t move as fast as I once did, of course, but my smile is quicker and I have a heart and mind ready the engage. I would likely not be at such an exciting and promising stage in my life if not for Kornelia Stephanie. I owe my new life to her, a wonderful friend and source of inspiration.
